Presidential election: Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald refuses to rule herself out as a potential candidate
leader
Mary Lou McDonald
has refused to rule herself out as a potential candidate for this year's
presidential election
.
Asked on Monday if she was ruling herself out for contesting the election, Ms McDonald replied: 'We're not ruling anything in or anything out.'
With only months to go until the election, very few would-be candidates have formally declared an interest in succeeding
Michael D Higgins
when his 14 years in Áras an Uachtaráin ends in November.
Sinn Féin is still considering whether or not it will work with the likes of
Labour
and the
Social Democrats
to support a left-wing unity candidate in the campaign.
READ MORE
Ms McDonald confirmed on Monday that she had received an internal report based on a consultation with Sinn Féin party membership seeking their views on the contest.
The report has not yet been shared within the party but is expected to be circulated later this summer.
Ms McDonald said her party has to 'do a bit more work, roll the process out, and I think over the next number of weeks, probably the end of July and into August, we will have a clearer picture of what we are doing'.
'As you know, we have been in discussion with other political parties around the option of perhaps a joint candidate, supported by all of us across the left and the combined opposition. So we don't have clarity, full clarity on this. It's a moving picture,' she added.
Ms McDonald said updates on Sinn Féin's 'process and procedure and all the runners and riders' would follow.
'I have seen lots of people's names mentioned. So we're not we're not making any comment definitively on any of them,' she said.
Ms McDonald was speaking outside the High Court on Monday ahead of the latest stage of a legal challenge taken by Kerry TD
Pa Daly
against the Government's appointment of so-called 'super junior' ministers who attend cabinet meetings.
His case points to article 28 of the Constitution, which limits the number of government members to 15, including the taoiseach. In facilitating more non-government ministers of State sitting at cabinet, the Government is 'acting contrary' to the 15-person limit and to the 'expressed wish of the people of Ireland', he claims.
'The Constitution, in our view, is very clear. The cabinet amounts to 15 members, and we believe that the government is breaking the rules,' Ms McDonald said.
Mr Daly confirmed his case may reference comments from former taoiseach
Leo Varadkar
, though it is not expected that the former
Fine Gael
leader will be called as a witness.
Earlier this year, Mr Varadkar wrote an opinion piece for The Sunday Times where he said he had used the roles of super juniors to 'get around' the rule capping the number of cabinet ministers to 15.
'We don't have any plans to call him physically into the court at the moment,' Mr Daly said. 'Some of the comments that he has made have been referenced in affidavits, but at the moment we don't have any plans to bring him in over the next few months.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
39 minutes ago
- RTÉ News
Legal proceedings initiated over cancelled social housing
Minister for Housing James Browne has confirmed that legal proceedings in relation to a cancelled social housing programme have been initiated by way of judicial review against the Department of Housing. Mr Browne said legal documents were received by the department on Friday in relation to legal proceedings over the Social Housing Public Private Partnership (PPP) Bundle 3 project. The project involved the delivery of around 486 social homes across six sites in Dublin, Wicklow, Kildare and Sligo. However, the Department of Housing decided not to proceed with the homes due to value for money concerns. Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne raised the issue at the Oireachtas Committee on Housing this afternoon, asking the minister if he was aware that legal proceedings had been initiated by the preferred bidder for the project. Mr Browne initially said he was not personally aware of any legal proceedings against his department. However, he later said department officials had made inquiries and clarified that legal proceedings had indeed been initiated. "My department was notified of it. I wasn't aware of that, but I can confirm that legal documents were received by my department in relation to the judicial review proceedings in relation to the PPP project. "If I was aware of it, I wouldn't have made some of my comments earlier, because with legal proceedings hadn't commenced, it was not appropriate for me to make any comment in relation to matters under legal proceedings. "But perhaps, just like my legal background and my commentary might indicate, I actually was not aware of it," Mr Browne told the committee. Earlier, Mr Hearne told reporters that the legal threat could result in High Court action and had the potential to further delay related projects. He said: "I was speaking to Dublin City Council officials yesterday, you will remember we've been raising concerns about the collapse of the PPP projects which are in a number of constituencies from Wicklow to Sligo to Dublin. "We found out yesterday that it is our understanding that the preferred bidder in the PPP is taking the Department of Housing to the High Court to challenge these projects. "Now, what that is likely to mean, we understand from the meeting, is that these projects are unlikely to proceed in other avenues being tendered even though they have planning permission. "This is an absolute mess.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
EU-US tariff negotiations have ‘number of weeks' to go, Donohoe says
Negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the United States look like they have a number of more weeks to go before a tariff deal is agreed, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe has said. EU negotiators have been making a push to exempt certain sectors, such as aviation and spirits, from blanket US import duties , with encouraging indications of headway, one source briefed on the discussions said. Those carve outs would be welcome news to the Government, as a win for whiskey distillers and the aircraft leasing industry. A deadline US President Donald Trump had set for countries to sign trade deals with the US to avoid steep tariffs on imports was extended from 9th July to August 1st. READ MORE The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, had been rushing to ink a deal with the White House by the original deadline on Wednesday, to avoid EU states being subject to threatened tariffs of 50 per cent. Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Donohoe said the extension likely meant 'we now have a number of more weeks of negotiation to go,' before a EU-US deal was agreed. [ Opens in new window ] Officials in Brussels and Dublin recognise the Trump administration will insist 10 per cent tariffs charged on European products sold into the US since April remain in place. The negotiations are focused on heading off higher trade levies of 20 or 50 per cent being charged on trade coming from the EU. EU and US negotiators are also exploring a proposal that European car manufacturers could offset some portion of import levies they would be charged, based on the size of their manufacturing footprint in the US, although the details of how such a scheme would work are vague, one EU source said. It is accepted that any deal will be an 'agreement in principle,' that leaves many of the complex and contentious details to be worked out at a later point. How the wealthy are buying up land to avoid inheritance tax Listen | 22:03 Economic planning by the Government for next year's budget 'will have to assume the presence of tariffs', Mr Donohoe said. 'It does look likely that tariffs are going to be a part of the new trading relationship that we will have with the US,' he said. 'I hope the negotiations that are under way in some way lessen their effect and their level with regard to particular sectors,' the Fine Gael minister said. The Government had made its case to the commission, who is leading the EU negotiations, about 'a number of sectors that are particularly important to the Irish economy,' he said. [ China warns countries on agreeing US tariff deal that would come at Beijing's expense Opens in new window ] 'Our assessment is that the negotiation is still ongoing and that we are not at the point where a deal has been done,' Mr Donohoe said. Some divisions are emerging between those who believe the EU should get a quick deal over the line at nearly any cost, and others who are concerned about locking the bloc into terms overly favourable to the US. 'We have to weigh up whether the benefit we get in uncertainty lifting is outweighed by the costs that could be created by the nature of the agreement itself,' Mr Donohoe said. He was speaking in Brussels after attending a meeting of EU finance ministers. The economic disruption and uncertainty caused by the transatlantic trade dispute would be a factor in the Government's budget planning, he said. There was a need to move away from the giveaway budgets of recent years, characterised by one-off measures to help people with their high cost of living, towards 'a more normal' budget, Mr Donohoe said. 'We do have to bring to conclusion the budgets that we had when inflation was so high,' he said. 'With all the economic uncertainty that we are in and the fact that that is likely to continue for some time, we have to move how we plan our budgets now into a different place,' he said. The expansive budget packages of recent years had come at a time when the rate of inflation was around 10 per cent, 'as opposed to where it is now at 2 per cent,' Mr Donohoe said.
RTÉ News
an hour ago
- RTÉ News
Courts cannot regulate Cabinet meetings
The Attorney General has said the courts cannot regulate who can attend Cabinet meetings and any intervention would be an unprecedented intrusion into that branch of Government. Senior Counsel Rossa Fanning was making submissions for a second day in a High Court challenge by Sinn Féin TD Pa Daly to the attendance of so called super junior ministers at cabinet meetings. Mr Daly has argued that the appointment of ministers of state with rights to attend Cabinet is unconstitutional. Three judges of the High Court began hearing the challenge taken by Mr Daly yesterday. The case is expected to finish tomorrow. A similar action by TD Paul Murphy, who is seeking an injunction stopping the junior ministers from attending Cabinet, will begin tomorrow. It will also be heard by the three judge divisional court, which is convened to hear matters of constitutional importance. Continuing his submissions today, Mr Fanning said Mr Daly's case could only be characterised as a political challenge to the integrity of the Government. He said it would be an extraordinary incursion in the autonomy and independence of of the executive branch for the court to regulate who attended government meetings in the absence of clear stipulation in the Constitution. He said the Government ought to have a significant margin of appreciation in how it conducts its business, other than where the constitution regulates it, and it was not for the court to find constitutional regulation where it was not contained in the text. He also said the case by Mr Daly was taken with a "curious mix of indolence and haste" referring to a letter from Mr Daly in July 2020 questioning the same points made in the current case. He said at that stage Mr Daly "did absolutely nothing" but five years later pursued it "with enormous haste". He said there was "no way to characterise these proceedings other than a political challenge to integrity of the government at the very outset of its existence ". Mr Fanning said Mr Daly was an opposition TD and his motivation for taking the case did not sit easily with the fact that a Sinn Féin junior minister attends meetings of the NI executive. Earlier, Mr Fanning said there was a danger of exaggeration in the case taken and it was not some sort of apocalyptic level of exponential growth in the size of government meetings which had risen by three. He said there were examples of officials attending government meetings at the discretion of the Taoiseach and these things were best left to that discretion and not second guessed by the court as Mr Daly's side was asking it to do. Incorrect interpretation of the Constitution Yesterday, Senior Counsel Feicin McDonagh said the State argued that other people apart from the fifteen presidentially appointed ministers could attend meetings, to give advice, at the invitation of the Taoiseach. He said if that was correct any number of individuals including non-politicians could attend and said this interpretation of the Constitution was not correct. Today, Mr Fanning said the court ought not to concern itself with hypotheticals and could not decide the case on hypotheticals. He said there was a suggestion by Mr Daly's side that "it would be awful if someone not involved in politics could be involved in policy formation. He said anyone suggesting government could form policy on complex areas such as disability issues without speaking to the HSE was not living in the real world. In response Senior Counsel Eileen Barrington said they key to the case was the meaning of Article 28 of the Constitution which provides for 15 ministers. "If the Taoiseach can invite anyone in to attend and take part, to participate in the debate and become involved in consensus it must be clearly wrong because only 15 are envisaged in the Constitution and it cannot be correct that any number of others unidentified by the constitution can come in and be involved in decision making," she said. Ms Barrington said this was not the same as officials being invited in for a specific purpose to answer questions. She said article 28 did not permit a constitutional "free for all outside it". She said the super junior ministers were acting in a "parallel cabinet and are acting as de facto government ministers when they are involved in decision making". Quoting the musical Hamilton, she said the super junior ministers were "in the room where it happened." She added: "And what is wrong with having people in the room where it happened? Well the problem is that they get to see and participate how the sausage is made they are involved in the sausage making ."
